Railways in Australia: Federation Unfulfilled

Each year, the Henry Parkes Foundation arranges for an oration to commemorate a definitive speech made by Sir Henry Parkes in October 1889 at Tenterfield, NSW. This speech gave real direction to Federation of the Australian colonies. The 2011 Henry Parkes oration was on the topic of railways and a brief summary (from the Summer 2012 edition of Track and Signal magazine) follows. The 2011 and earlier orations may be viewed at  http://www.parkesfoundation.org.au

Professor Philip Laird

By Philip Laird  – University of Wollongong

In his 1889 speech, Parkes had a clear vision of an Australian Federation that included an efficient rail system to increase both the nation’s defence capability and its prosperity.

If Sir Henry were to return today to Australia, he would be impressed with advances in railway engineering along with some world class operations. However, he would be greatly disappointed and quite angry at the substandard nature of rail in New South Wales. He would also demand to know why, 110 years after Federation, the nation’s railway gauges had not been standardised; and, why successive federal governments have failed to give Australia a fit for purpose rail system.

As a result of decisions taken at the 1897 Australasian Federal Convention in Adelaide, it was agreed that the powers of the Federal Parliament would include post and telegraphs offices along with defence and customs.  However, the control of the railways, except for defence purposes, was to remain with the States.

Over time, this decision not to transfer railways to the Commonwealth has proven to impose additional costs to Australia. Had railways been a Federal responsibility, as they are in Canada and the United States, the following 12 benefits could well have been realised.

A geological excursion to the Shakey Isles and an account of the Christchurch Earthquake

Rock fall following the Christchurch 6.3 earthquake. Source http://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2011/02/23/on-the-causes-of-the-high-levels-of-loss-in-the-christchurch-earthquake/

Posted 28 February 2011

Last week 11 students and staff from the School of Earth & Environmnetal Sciences (SEES) returned from a geological fieldtrip to the South Island of New Zealand to investigate active tectonic processes including the fault rupture from the magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Christchurch last September. Little did we know that a second large earthquake (magnitude 6.3) would devastate much of Christchurch only 5 days after our return highlighting the unpredictability associated with seismic hazards. 

The fieldtrip was organised by two SEES PhD students, Steph Kermode and Nathan Jankowski, who head up the student social group – GROUNDSWELL and was supported by SEES staff Brian Jones and Solomon Buckman. The students included a mix of postgraduates and undergraduates from all levels. The purpose of the trip was to observe active tectonic and glacial processes that have sculpted the landscape in New Zealand that are not readily observable in the relatively stable Australian continent. The long-term aim is to run this fieldtrip each year as an intensive field-based summer subject in which students can get first hand experience of active geological processes including volcanoes, geothermal power stations, glaciers and faults associated with active mountain building.   

The landscapes and mountains of New Zealand are incredibly young with most of the relief having formed in only the last 5 million years. This is in stark contrast to the Australian continent that has not experienced any major mountain building activity for the past 200 million years and subsequently been eroded down to a vast, flat continent. Despite the contrast, Australia and New Zealand share a common geological origin as they were joined together 85 million years ago as a part of the supercontinent Gondwana. Between 85-45 million years ago New Zealand rifted away from Australia creating the Tasman Sea that now seperates the two continents. New Zealand is situated directly on the boundary between the Australian and Pacific plates making it a particularly active in terms of volcanic and seismic activity. In the North Island the Pacific Plate is moving to the east and subducting (sinking) beneath the North Island resulting in the development of an active volcanic arc and a deep sea trench to the east which extends all the way to Tonga. To the south subduction has flipped with the Australian Plate subducting beneath the South Island to form the Macquarie Ridge and Southern Alps. In between the North and South Islands is an intense zone of faulting where the New Zealand continent is being wrenched apart by the Alpine Fault. This is a major transform (strike-slip) plate boundary and has been active for the past 25 million years. The Alpine Fault consists of many subsiduary fault splays along its length. The big surprise with the Christchurch earthquakes has been the fact that Christchurch has not experienced large or regular earthquakes in historic times and that the fault line has not been identified  due to it being buried by thick sequences of river sediment that has been eroded off the Southern Alps. Christchurch is also quite a distance from the Alpine Fault which may have built a collectively false sense of security. New Zealand is referred to as the Shakey Isles for good reason. It sits on the Pacific Rim of fire and is subject to regular, intense seismic activity as the tectonic plates jostle and collide with each other.

It was clearly evident when we visited Christchurch that it was still rebuilding from the September 3, 2010 magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck 45 km west of the city in the rural outskirts of Roleston. It is important to realize that the Richter scale used to measure the magnitude of earthquakes is a base-ten logarithmic scale so an earthquake measuring 5.0 has a shaking amplitude ten times that of an earthquake of magnitude 4.0. However, the total energy released is 33.3 times the amount for a difference of 1. Put simply a difference of 2 on the Richter scale results in about 1000 times the amount of total energy released. Most movement on faults is accommodated by large earthquakes. Unfortunately earthquakes remain difficult to predict in the short time-scales useful to people due to the numerous variables – build up of stress, time since last rupture, water saturation of the fault plane and most importantly the fact that earthquakes generally occur 10’s to 100’s km below the surface where we cannot make direct observations of the physical conditions. Geologists rely solely on geophysical and seismic data to interpret conditions and structures deep in the lithosphere.

We visited the fault rupture and although the roads had been repaired the 4 m offset of roads, fences, hedges and canals was clear to see as well as numerous cracks and compressional mounds along the fault trace. It was also evident that many of the locals weren’t happy with the attention they were getting from passers by like us who wanted to stop and view the fault. There was a real sense amongst Cantebrians that they were lucky to get away without any loss of life after the first earthquake. Unfortunately that was not the case with the recent earthquake in which the death toll has just passed 100 and there are still over 200 people missing.

The epicenter of the February 21, 2011 magnitude 6.3 earthquake was only 5 km from the centre of Christchurch with the epicenter centred on Lettelton.  Because of proximity to the epicenter and the shallow depth (5 km) of the hypocentre, ground shaking in Christchurch was much more severe for this latest earthquake than for the larger magnitude 7 event in September. Ground accelerations were unusually high for this event, probably due to the shallow depth of the earthquake hypocenter and the thick unconsolidated substrate of wet mud and sand that much of Christchurch is built on. Compared to solid rock, sands and muds have the effect of slowing and amplifying seismic waves as they travel through the earth resulting in greater shaking. Wet sediments are also prone to liquefaction when shaken which means they suddenly change from behaving as a solid during normal conditions to a liquid during an earthquake. During an earthquake liquid sand or mud can spew out of cracks in the ground and flow down roads and collect in depressions and drainage networks. Heavy buildings and structures will tend to sink and become unstable during liquefaction if they do not have adequately engineered foundations. Typically ground shaking is in the order of 25%g  for a magnitude 6.3 earthquake but the Christchurch earthquake produced shaking of up to 188%g. To put this in perspective, any shaking above 100%g is enough to overcome the acceleration of gravity and start throwing objects up in the air! Although New Zealand has a very strong and strictly enforced earthquake building code, this level of shaking resulted in severe and widespread damage. The Modified Mercalli Intensity scale (I-XII) is used to measure damage based on observations and interviews. Levels of IX to X were recorded around the epicenter which means intense to violent damage of well-built stuctures and damage or destruction of some well built wooden structures. Most houses are built of wood in New Zealand because it is much more flexible and resistant to earthquakes than brittle brick structures. Unfortunately, aftershocks can occur for many months after an event creating dangerous conditions in already weakened structures. The other aspect is that where stress is released by an earthquake it can result in increased stress along other faults segments resulting in an “unzipping” effect as stress in the crust is redistributed and comes to a new equilibrium. This appears to be the case with this second magnitude 6.3 earthquake following the magnitude 7.0 earthquake last year some 45 km further west.

Part of my research involves investigating evidence of ancient earthquakes (Paleoseismology) in areas of Australia that are prone to seismic activity and I have a PhD student – Chulantha Jayawardena, investigating active faults in the Adelaide region. Although Australia is relatively stable compared to New Zealand it is still affected by earthquakes as evident by the magnitude 5.6 Newcastle earthquake in 1989 and the magnitude 5.4 Adelaide earthquake in 1954. Earthquakes in Australia are referred to as intraplate earthquakes as they do not occur on plate boundaries and are much less understood and certainly less predictable in terms of their distribution. The danger with these intraplate earthquakes is that they may have long recurrence intervals of 100’s or 1000’s of years before the crustal stresses build up enough to rupture and generate an earthquake and they can strike areas that are underprepared for such events. We are investigating active faults along the margins of the Mount Lofty and Flinders ranges in South Australia by way of trenching, mapping and using ground penetrating radar to identify previous ruptures. Some of these faults have rupture lengths and offsets of single events that suggest magnitudes in the order of 5-7 on the richter scale. Part of our research involves dating these paleoseismic events by sampling the sediments that have accumulated adjacent to the fault rupture using luminescence dating techniques (OSL) to further constrain the timing of past earthquakes. Identifying hidden fault lines and constraining the timing of past seismic events is of fundamental importance in understanding how mountains such as the Flinders Ranges form in intraplate settings and of course it has important practical implications in terms of planning and implementing appropriate building codes in earthquake prone regions of Australia.

Earthquakes are a global hazard that knows no political boundaries. Earthquake response and rescue efforts are often globally assisted and require the expertise of many disciplines including engineers, geologists, planners, medics, police and emergency response personnel. Earthquake mitigation is an ongoing process from the initial identification of faults and historic seismic activity, through to developing appropriate building codes, to the rescue efforts when these hazards strike through to planning for the next event. The tectonic processes so evident in New Zealand provide an important modern-day analogue in terms of understanding how older continents like Australia have been shaped and formed in the past.

For further information please contact Dr. Solomon Buckman solomon@uow.edu.au in the School  of Earth & Environmental Sciences

The Queensland floods, climate change or poor planning?

Professor Gerald Nanson

A number of media commentators and numerous letters to the editors in major newspapers have suggested that the recent floods in Queensland are some sort of bellwether of global warming and Australia’s hazardous climatic future in a warming world. There is no doubt the globe has been warming over the past century or so, and it seems very likely that this is a function, at least in part, of our introduction of excessive Greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. But Australian weather is far too variable today, and indeed has been so for thousands of years, to enable any confident predictions to be made about the changing magnitude and frequency of extreme events. The last major flood on the Brisbane River was in 1974 which coincided in many places with the most extreme flood events continent-wide since European arrival. So while we have just two such truly ‘catastrophic’ flood events in our recorded history, it is very difficult to say anything scientifically sound about their changing magnitude and the likely frequency of their occurrence. Scientists sometimes use smaller events analysed statistically to predict the likely size and frequency of extreme events, but Australian climate is well known to move in cycles, several decades in length, which commonly result in clusters of decades producing very different conditions to those before and after. Indeed, our natural climate is something of a rollercoaster ride. When ‘old timers’ timers say that a particular flood is the largest they have ever seen in their area, it isn’t necessarily because climate is changing, it’s mostly because even ‘old timers’ don’t live for hundreds of years. Global movement of the ‘climate goalposts’ can be used as an excuse for poor urban regional planning. There is abundant evidence of extreme flood risk in many areas of Australia, including in Brisbane, and much of this evidence was collected before global warming was an additional significant variable to consider. The human cost of flooding in Australia is mostly the product of poor planning, not climate change.

Professor Gerald Nanson is from the UOW School of Earth and Environmental Sciences

 Read another short essay from Gerald :
“The floods of Queensland have raised important issues relating to how well Australia collects data that is vital for the accurate analysis of potential hazards, and how adequately our country understands and therefore is prepared to deal with our extreme environmental hazards.”  More at: http://media.uow.edu.au/news/UOW094233.html

Climate Change is Real, Believe Me

Dr Helen McGregor

As a climate scientist I am often asked if I believe in human-induced climate change. I find this a curious question: for me the science of human-induced climate change is not something one believes in but an obvious conclusion drawn from the data. But it got me thinking – where has this belief/non-belief idea come from and why is there so much confusion about climate science?

There is no doubt that climate is a complicated beast. There are multiple players – the main ones being the atmosphere, ocean, vegetation, and ice – all of which interact with each other on a variety of timescales from hours to decades to centuries and beyond. Trying to describe all the processes, and to put them in a climate model, is a tough gig. But it can and has been done. Our daily weather forecasts are based on models, and though not perfect, they’re often within a couple of degrees Celsius of the actual temperature. That’s quite an achievement when you think about it.

Importantly, the models reproduce the observed 20th Century warming. This means that at least at the global scale we do have a good handle on the climate complexity. But communicating this complexity to the public is no mean feat and scientists aren’t always the best at communicating their own science in a language that non-scientists can understand.

One of the difficulties in communicating climate science is the concept of “uncertainty”. With the vast number of processes in the climate system there are some that we understand better than others – uncertainty describes how well we know what we know. Climate scientists, having a good understanding of uncertainty, tend to downplay the state of knowledge and this can be taken by some as a reason to do nothing.

But there are many instances where we may not understand a process 100 per cent still act. For example, we know that a healthy diet and exercise reduces the risk of heart disease, yet the details of exactly which food and how much exercise are still the subject of research. Does this mean we should have an unhealthy diet and not exercise? Of course not. The same principle applies to reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. We know that there is a big problem and should get on with the process of dealing with it.

The concept of uncertainty and the complexity of climate science also do not sit comfortably with the demand from the media for short “sound bites”, a black and white statement, one view for and one view against. Uncertainty is the greyness around the black and white. The for and against may appear to give balance but it misrepresents the almost absolute consensus among climate scientists – 97-98 per cent consensus according to findings published this month in the USA Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – and provides a louder voice to those who disagree with the idea of human-induced climate change than they would otherwise deserve.

Throw into this mix various lobby groups and vested interests in maintaining the status quo and the concept of uncertainty can be exploited further to confuse the public. In responding to human-induced climate change we move through climate science into economics, politics and social sciences. Between all of this it seems to become easier to frame the debate as a question of belief or non-belief. The understanding of how the science is generated and its implications are lost, and somehow by non-believing the problem does not exist.

But the issue of human-induced climate change is clear and present, and among all the confusion there are some fundamentals that will not change, and some misconceptions that must be addressed:

• Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps heat and this causes the atmosphere, and the planet, to warm.
• The burning of fossil fuels has increased the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. This has been measured directly at places like Mauna Loa in Hawaii and by measuring bubbles of trapped air in ice cores. CO2 levels have increased from 280 parts per million (ppm) at around 1800 to 385 ppm in the past couple of years. As a result the planet is about 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer. This doesn’t sound like much but there are knock-on effects from the temperature increase. Ocean water has warmed, and water expands when it’s warmer, so sea levels have risen. The warming is not distributed evenly across the world because the poles have warmed the most, so sea ice is retreating and the ice sheets have started to melt. Sea ice is important – it’s like a giant mirror reflecting the sun’s heat and light back out into space. Without the sea ice that heat is absorbed by the ocean, further warming the planet.
• The atmosphere, winds and the like, redistribute CO2 across the planet in a matter of months so that even though the US and China are the biggest emitters of CO2, those countries do not feel the full force of their own emissions. Hence global warming is a global issue.
• Australia is part of the CO2 problem. I often hear the argument, including from politicians, that Australia only emits about 1.5 per cent of the global total of CO2. Quite so, however 95 per cent of countries emit less than 2 per cent of the global total. It is not possible for countries to do nothing – Australia must reduce its CO2 emissions. Period.

As I sit here in bustling New York City, with the gulf oil spill making headline news day in day out, I can’t help but be anxious that climate change issues have slid under the radar. Human-induced climate change is insidious. It is not an acute, headline-grabbing event but the consequences of climate change will have far greater and far reaching impacts. The science provides the clear evidence that human-induced climate change is occurring – the real uncertainty lies in our collective ability to do something about it.

*Dr Helen McGregor, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, recently visited the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, University of Columbia, New York. Dr McGregor is now teaching in the Faculty of Science’s Climate Change subject.